It has been a week since the earthquake in the Pacific and the tsunami that devastated communities of coastal Japan.\u00a0 It is difficult to imagine the near complete destruction of so many small towns and villages.\u00a0 Main-stream-media seems focused on the nuclear plants with much exaggeration and irresponsible reporting.\u00a0 We have been fortunate to hear from a few former students that their families are safe on high ground.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, and here, we carry on.<\/p>\n
Last week I ended my writing early Saturday morning.\u00a0 Then I was off to Briarwood to a full house of senior folks where we played and sang and joked with the crowd for over an hour and then joined them to visit and share fantastic food.\u00a0 That play date is the highlight of our month because of all the involvement by the audience in singing along and requesting songs, which we usually provide.\u00a0 Occasionally they will request a song we don\u2019t know or cannot pick out on the fly.<\/p>\n
I also forgot to say that we reached the end of last week with successful passage through young-Britt Annie\u2019s heat cycle, and she is no longer attractive.\u00a0 It was a horrid last 3 weeks of worry and concern, because we did not want puppies again this year, even though last year\u2019s litter was special and ended up in special homes where they are loved as family members.\u00a0 That\u2019s the best thing a breeder can hope for.<\/p>\n
Sunday. Weather has turned to rainy and probably will be like this for the rest of the week.\u00a0 Off to Taize\u2019 tonight.\u00a0 Back home, with a full tummy.\u00a0 Only two of us musicians were there tonight.\u00a0 It was a nice service, and we had a great dinner of Chicken & Rice with veggies casserole (Costco\u2019s finest), sliced huge tasty oranges, a dark bread, and two kinds of lemonade.\u00a0 Everyone had two helpings, and there was still some left for a couple to take leftovers home.<\/p>\n
Tonight at 8:00 p.m. is the showing on the National Geographic channel of MegaQuake, expected for the Cascades in our life time.\u00a0 We have a friend recording it on a VCR tape for us because our antenna is not working.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t been able to watch TV in several years.\u00a0 We are able to receive news on the Internet, and have a broadband connection.\u00a0 I can sit at one end of the house with my laptop and John can watch at the other end of the house on our family computer.\u00a0 We have a wireless system that allows me to communicate with my laptop with his computer and modem connected to allow us both on the Internet at the same time.\u00a0 And the landline phone continues to work too \u2013 modern technology is magical.<\/p>\n
Monday.\u00a0 Today is \u201cDead\u201d day at school the first day of Finals week, with no finals held.\u00a0 Funny, even though I\u2019m retired, I still keep track of things.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be alone today, at least till afternoon.\u00a0 After feeding the horses, John took off at 7:45 a.m. for White Heron Cellars, over on the bend in the Columbia River, to help prune grape vines.<\/p>\n
If you use the coordinates in the next line in the Google Earth \u201cFly to\u201d box<\/p>\n
47.233909, -120.000374<\/p>\n
. . . you can find where the vineyard and winery are.<\/p>\n
Zoom out and you can see the Columbia River and the big gravel bar across to the south from the Winery: http:\/\/www.whiteheronwine.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n Isn\u2019t that cool? He will work about 3 hours and return home.\u00a0 It is supposed to be a nice day.<\/p>\n I have exercise class (maybe) at the Adult Activities Center (AAC).\u00a0\u00a0 Our teacher had his last day last Wed., and we have to get a new one, or someone at the AAC has to take over.\u00a0 I could probably lead it, but I won\u2019t volunteer.\u00a0 I\u2019m making good headway with the tax receipt entering, so will probably just continue.\u00a0 John got home in good shape and is going back Wednesday morning to continue pruning (Syrah vines) and see if they can do more than 3 rows, now that he knows what is wanted.\u00a0 We both rested this afternoon after being awakened at 12:45 a.m. by a hang-up caller.\u00a0 Not nice.<\/p>\n Tuesday.\u00a0 No big things happening today till night when I have to play music in town, but John will take a trip earlier to fill his tank with expensive gas.\u00a0 While there he will pick up my meds and some groceries.\u00a0 I am spending all my time on tax entry again today.\u00a0 It\u2019s an overcast day, and John is back from feeding the horses and exercising the dogs.\u00a0 They had to tiptoe around a herd of deer again today.<\/p>\n It rained on me tonight going and coming from town.\u00a0 We had a nice play time and singing, and the other fiddler and I twin-fiddled 3 Irish songs at the end after everyone else quit.\u00a0 Pretty cool.<\/p>\n Wednesday.\u00a0\u00a0 John got up, feed the horses, and left for the vineyard. \u00a0I slept in !!.\u00a0 Guess I needed it. I was awake at least twice with nightmares.\u00a0 I just cannot let school go and get on with my life (so John muses).\u00a0 The dream was about a large GIS class the first day of the quarter and I didn’t have enough room, plus students without the prerequisites were signed in, in record numbers.\u00a0 Then somehow dog kennels were being brought in by a former student to set up as carrels, but I didn’t have computers there.\u00a0 The other thing in the dream was that a student who was going to drop had brought Bundt type cakes (4 of them) and was carrying them around offering them to everyone.\u00a0 I had a piece of sweet sugar-covered raspberry cake.\u00a0 I was also frantically calling the registrar\u2019s office and running around to two different buildings looking for available classroom space.\u00a0 I even remember thinking that I had to be careful getting so much exercise with my heart condition.\u00a0 Holy mackerel, I was glad to awaken.\u00a0 Still it was hard to get back to sleep.\u00a0 How do you stop thinking about such stuff after you wake?<\/p>\n Now I have eaten.\u00a0 John bought a couple of bananas and told me to eat one and then look up \u201cbanana equivalent dose\u201d on the web.\u00a0 Maybe later; I\u2019m getting ready to start on emails, and then worry about going to the hospital for a blood draw and on to exercise class.\u00a0 I hope to visit my friend in the hospital (surgery) while there, but the past two days she has not felt up to visitors.\u00a0 How WELL I understand that.\u00a0 Turns out I got there for my blood draw and walked around to Med-Surg to see if she could visit, and she had already been released.\u00a0 So, I went to exercise after putting a few gallons of expensive gas ($3.72\/gal.) in my \u201cmid-grade or premium gas only\u201d car.\u00a0 Stayed after today for 2 games of pool.\u00a0 I won both.<\/p>\n Thursday.\u00a0 John plans to go again to prune.\u00a0 Nice thing is that he will get a bottle of wine for each work hour.\u00a0 If it stays wet and cold here at home we\u2019ll reconstitute our wine cellar (he\u2019d like to spend some time here with the horses).\u00a0 That will more than pay for the gasoline.\u00a0 He\u2019s off and it is a beautiful day.\u00a0 I have only to do tax entry today and go play music this afternoon at Dry Creek.\u00a0 We both got home safely, and I think he will prune again\u00a0 tomorrow.<\/p>\n Friday.\u00a0\u00a0 Woke up to SNOW and it is still coming down at 10:00 a.m., but slowing.\u00a0 John went to the vineyard.\u00a0 The location is 1,000 feet lower than here and there is very little threat of rain there this morning.\u00a0 I will go to a scholarship luncheon and to the Adult Activity Center. I enjoyed my lunch of baked potato with all sorts of stuffings to bury it in.\u00a0 Then I left there for my exercise class that was mostly a \u201clate\u201d St. Patrick\u2019s Day party.\u00a0 We had Irish bread, mint cookies, and punch with lime sherbet. \u00a0I didn\u2019t have much of the food because I had just eaten, but I tasted the bread and the cookie because our leader had cooked them herself.\u00a0 Then we visited and played games.\u00a0 I played two games of Nintendo Wii bowling \u2013 new to me.\u00a0 Really pretty neat (and that comes from a previous bowler).\u00a0 You can actually turn the remote controller and put a \u201chook\u201d on your virtual bowling ball.\u00a0 I walked toward the screen as if I was on a lane (an alley).\u00a0 Prizes were awarded to the high scorer, but I did not win.\u00a0 My partner did, however, and she shared her goodies.\u00a0 I brought home a microwavable bucket of popcorn and some chocolate covered raisins.\u00a0 John was home when I got here and had taken the dogs for a run.\u00a0 He then slept while I worked.<\/p>\n Nothing is planned for Saturday.\u00a0 John won\u2019t go back to prune till Monday morning.\u00a0 Hopefully it won\u2019t be raining all day tomorrow and he can get out to work with the horses.\u00a0 I need to walk to the barn to see about learning how to feed again.\u00a0 I have not helped since before I had the heart attack in Nov. 2009.\u00a0 Guess it is about time I learned the procedure now with the 6 horses.\u00a0 John said they were really wild tonight running up and down the pasture, jumping the ditch, and playing tag.\u00a0 He was happy he had not taken the dogs \u2013 when it has been raining they come back carrying dirt and worse from the pasture into the house.<\/p>\n Hope you all have another good week.\u00a0\u00a0 We send our best regards to all our faithful readers.<\/p>\n P.S., did you Google, banana equivalent dose ?\u00a0 You should.\u00a0 It\u2019s interesting and relevant to the nuclear news from Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been a week since the earthquake in the Pacific and the tsunami that devastated communities of coastal Japan.\u00a0 It is difficult to imagine the near complete destruction of so many small towns and villages.\u00a0 Main-stream-media seems focused on the nuclear plants with much exaggeration and irresponsible reporting.\u00a0 We have been fortunate to hear … Continue reading “SATURDAY — Nancy learns about Wii”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72iNf-c6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}